Ideally, when a business needs to serve food and beverages, the customers are conveniently located at tables, a large kitchen with a staff is located nearby, and there are enough servers to deliver the food quickly and efficiently to the customers. However, there are many scenarios in which such conditions do not exist. In such scenarios, many businesses end up using carts to serve food and beverages. One example is a sidewalk food concession cart. Another example is a room service cart in a hotel. Still another example is a galley cart on an airline, bus, or cruise ship. On an airline, for example, food and beverages need to be selected that are appropriate for the length of the trip and delivered to the aircraft just prior to flight time. On the aircraft itself, there are additional obstacles to overcome when serving food and beverages, including limited space and few personnel available to serve. Furthermore, the food has to be heated or chilled during the flight. This requires that the aircraft have enough ovens and refrigerators to heat and/or store food. On flights that are not full, some of the oven and refrigeration equipment goes unused, and simply takes up space and weight, and wastes fuel. Another challenge for serving food and beverages on a plane is all of the appropriate regulations must be complied with. For example, galley carts on airlines have to be sanitized after use according to the standards set forth by the governmental agencies worldwide. Also, regulations require that airline food be stored at certain temperatures from the time of preparation to the time of service. Failure to do so can result in civil liability if passengers get sick.
To summarize, serving food and beverages using serving carts presents its own set of challenges. These include properly outfitting and stocking the carts for missions to which they are assigned, keeping track of where carts are, knowing what kind of food they are carrying, tracking when they were last sanitized, and keeping a record of the temperature at which the contents of the carts are maintained. It can thus be seen that there is a need for a serving cart that addresses these challenges.